001it being six o'clock on tuesday december the 14th i called to order the regular meeting of the ranchi school district board of directors and ask that we stand to say the pledge of allegiance flag is over there i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and through the republic for which it stands one nation under god and indivisible with liberty and justice for all i welcome everyone to this board meeting and thank you for joining us the meeting is conducted in english but we do have translation services so that anyone who wants to make a citizen comment in spanish it can be translated and repeated into english i will quickly describe this in spanish and make this a routine as a service that we provide explicaciones in espanol to name also
002in the superintendent's report at the end of the meeting paul gordon will bring us up to date on other efforts that the district is making to improve how board proceedings are communicated to everybody in the public both in english and in spanish this is the first meeting of the year for the newly organized board in january trisha lubat leadership director for the washington state school directors association will lead us through a full workshop on board norms and best practices for effective working relationships but as the presiding officer i wish once to express four hopes and expectations for a non-partisan collegiate board first of all we all need to key off our oath of office our job is to promote the interests of education let's remember to represent an act for all the different people in
003the school district community those heard and those unheard those whose paths we do not cross as much as those whose paths we know well team building the interactive power of five people thinking with open and independent minds adding the superintendent and the district as the sixth player is a machine for discovering unimagined outcomes team building and finally for when we engage in board discussion i'm a believer that mutual benefits solutions are optimal in the long run and i appeal for this mindset so that's a very short introduction which i hope will help us have a very constructive year thank you very much for listening to that um i believe there is one change being requested uh to the agenda to uh have the education northwest contract be a separate action item uh unless there are
004any other requests from the board members to modify the agenda i will proceed to the consents okay um the consent agenda includes the minutes from the 15th of november board workshop the 23rd of november regular meeting it includes the vouchers approved for payment as listed in the attachment it includes the november payroll the november personnel report the surplus report dated december the 6th and contracts as listed in the schedule it also includes three field trips that is our consent agenda do i have any motion to approve that i'm for approval of the consent agenda as you presented is there a second oh second but i guess ask a question it's the consent agenda as amended by pulling out as amended with the um education northwest contract as a separate action item yes that's correct modify
005my motion second the modified motion thank you okay uh will all those in support signify by saying i i will call a one by one vote if it's not clear i i i guess we did it one by one [Laughter] okay i hit the wrong button turn it off instead of on i believe that we have one in-person request for a citizen comment that will be related to the action item on the equity contract and i think it would be appropriate for us to listen to that citizen comment first so kim can uh are you and i'm not sure who is ready to give that comment i just know there's one person in the audience okay i'm just right uh there are three minutes allocated for um your comment and uh kim will keep contact
006for that letter signal when you're ready and we are all ears and wish to listen to you thank you very much hello okay okay my name is brad burke and this equity audit is not required there was only one bid presented no competing bids were presented to the board the proposed contract is questionable and there is no science behind any benefits of such an audit this equity issue is a politically inspired divisive and polarizing topic that elicits emotional responses and this equity audit idea was basically presented in rapidly rapidly ushered through at a previous board meeting without adequate time for responsible consideration i ask what is going on so at a time of declining student enrollment why does this school board think it is fiscally responsible to spend funds for an equity audit that is
007not required by the state and moreover where it is not even able to present competing bids so not only do we have an ill-defined goal that this proposed audit is meant to achieve we are not certain if there even exists any scientific or statistically significant data that such an audit will improve the education raised this standard for our students but now the superintendent cannot even provide this board with competing bids bottom line is this the elephant in the room is that this suggested audit was never previously proven to have benefit nor is it required by law it's an added cost and why was it even proposed the elephant is the question why the only possible answer is that the superintendent believes it will benefit and promote the far-left political agenda of a social justice ideology
008he adheres to we have bowed already to the state requirement for racial justice social justice training both marxist and anti-origin anti-american origins now should we be spending approximately two hundred thousand dollars for extra brownie points to go even further down this septic rabbit hole why does the school board wish to fix a problem that does not exist does this superintendent wish to create more distrust and confusion in our community as well as spend funds on this folly so at a time of declining student enrollment why does the school board think that it is fiscally responsible to spend funds for an equity audit that is not required by the state and moreover it doesn't even present competing bids it is wise for the is it wise for the school board to continue to consider this equity
009audit that will only serve to further alienate and polarize our community this money would be far better used by teachers for educating and okay i just believe it destabilizes and tears down our public education thank you very much for coming here and for giving us your words and opinion i believe that is the only comment we have available on that subject we have one online online on the same subject or we do it later all right go ahead and do it now then thanks kim uh i believe this is brian higgins brian when you're ready if you can identify yourself and then initiate your comment yeah my name is brian higgins i teach at wenatchee high school and i live on south med house street usually i pull over for this part of the conversation
010so sorry about the extra volume i wanted to give a couple shout outs for a couple things that happened this week and last week first off martin barron i want to say thank you again for coming into my avid class and taking part in our class and uh performing as a student in that class and seeing what it's like to be an avid student it was super impactful for our students to see our leadership come in and just be a part of the regular school day and it helps them to realize that our leadership really does care about what's going on in our classroom so thank you very much i also wanted to say thank you to janelle bailey and wilbert ochoa at foothills middle school i had a chance to go down there to
011i had a chance to go down there hello you're still coming through okay thank you i had a chance to go to foothills middle school today on behalf of our abbott program district-wide just to check in with those teachers and check our alignment that we have across our middle school and our high school level i'll be going to pioneer middle school and orchard middle school this week and after break as well and i just wanted to say thank you so much to those teachers and to mark covea for his time one for making time for me too for making time for their students and helping our avid district-wide program be effective and align even more strongly and i just wanted to say that i was so impressed by the eighth graders that i met with
012today and talked with that i am super optimistic about avid next year when i teach them as freshmen so thank you very much to all of those uh people oh and one last shout out to aida bound with the hap project she's been coming into my ever class for four years to help students loom hats for our community and take part in some really effective and engaging community involvement community service so a big shout out to her as well so thank you very much for everyone for supporting the program and helping our students really get their fingers in being effective community and civic minded community members thank you thank you brian in safe driving okay i believe that is all the comments we have for this meeting so i will move on to action item
013uh the education northwest contract this contract is for 180 000 188 it is the version with on-site and in-person focus group time and meetings and includes changes these changes that resulted from yesterday's workshop a revised schedule of payments based on deliverables and in the scope specific reference to and alignment with the measurable six future ready outcomes of the strategic plan these were amendments made from the original draft as a result of yesterday's board workshop that is the nature of a summary nature moral title of the contract that is open for approval given the work session that we had was it work session work workshop sorry the world colliding given the workshop that we had yesterday um i would like to make a and in the great discussion that we had yesterday i would like to
014make a motion to approve the education northwest contract thank you maria do we have a second for that motion i will second the motion thank you in having been proposed and seconded i now open this up for discussion by any and all board members i i do want to say that i appreciate the public comment that was made this evening regarding the connection to student learning because in our workshop yesterday and that was extremely important to me that this work shouldn't be done just for the sake of doing the work but that should be just you know tied to our strategic initiatives and you know we we focus on having students reading at grade level that's extremely important students ready for algebra students ready for kindergarten we asked for a revision of the contract so
015that it is now tied to those strategic objectives and student achievement which was uh paramount importance to me so i am now much more comfortable with the contract as a whole so i appreciated having that workshop i thought it was a great opportunity to learn more about the process and and what to expect i wish we had had it before the rfp went out in some ways so that we could get those communicate those the importance of the tying it back to the education related goals and the big six so i think that was helpful i struggled with some of their responses and whether they really truly get it i appreciate the revisions that they made hearing us certainly my thought going in was that was what it was about to begin with so to
016have to at the last minute kind of flip it i don't know that they've internalized that in their process yet um so my my concern continues to be this is really important work and i want to make sure it gets done right um it's it's a you know a ton of money and i know we're using our cares funds for it but as we um heard that this is a potential phase one of two phase process so you know what is the expectation in phase two are we um going it alone with you know no more financing available so i i still have a little bit of sticker shock especially when to me the most important part of it was the on-site that was again only added in this last part of it i really
017felt like that should have been maybe what we we went out with um so i i i appreciate them listening to us making those changes and adjusting based on our needs and explaining things to us i wasn't totally confident in a lot of their answers in what they may um you know how they're going to discern policy from practice in some cases and again whether they internalized how we want it related back to the academic performance issues so i have some concerns on that level but then my other major concern that i i had at the outset when we first discussed the contract was just the the impact on you know the the timeline being so condensed for this type of work and and the value that we need from it um it was very
018clear in the conversation that a lot of the the burden is going to be on the district to make sure surveys are are answered focus groups are and i appreciate them saying oh it's not that much time but i'm not a teacher in a class that's already running at wits end or covering six classes to know if if that's a burden i can see now as a parent if i had to spend another 30 minutes on a survey after spending an hour on on our forget what they call that time now for the littles you know it's a lot we're asking parents to do during this time and i know we're doing some work on the physical safety side of things because of all these threats so we've got you know learning recovery physical safety
019concerns going on um so i still struggle with is this the best time knowing what is going on um but that that's really what it comes down to i know we need to do the work i don't want to punt the ball you know i don't want to keep hunting um because i recognize the value and importance but i think it was really important that we get it done right thanks julian those are good comments catherine thank you i i would like to echo everything that julie said she's spoken much more eloquently than i could but i'd also like to add a few thoughts myself um i was not here on the board for the initial approval of this and wanting to have it done i like julie would have liked a lot more information
020before a vote was taken and the the real problem i have with the entire audit is after having read evergreen's audit and their results what they didn't give any actionable items in my opinion we're going to get this information and we are probably going to find out as they did at evergreen that we don't have as many teachers of color as we do students of color that the lower income students that we have struggle more that the homeless students that we have struggle more i think we're going to find out all in all of this information and all of that is is accurate um what are what are we going to do with that information um i didn't think there were very clear actionable items in the evergreen audit that said okay we we know
021this now now we're going to do this so that's where i struggle i want to know what we're going to do with that information what actual things are we going to do as a school district as a school board with the information that we learn that that's my concern thanks catherine um i think the reason we are in we're in need of an audit review is because we know what the data shows us um catherine just pointed it out so we already know this is happening in our district and like martin just said at the beginning of the board meeting we are here to serve all students those heard and not heard we've allowed our unheard population to go unheard for way too long this audit is uh or review is gonna allow us to
022open the door and identify how we can better serve those students that are not heard and those students are the ones that are not showing in on our meeting standard in our in our district data or the ones that are um over represented in some categories again this is a board value that the previous board sat in a work session and we talked about it what is really surprising to me is that we spent three meetings now talking about the work of equity and the reality is that this we're gonna because it's a board value we're gonna continue having these conversations and it's scary to me that we are questioning it so much but it's so evident that this work is needed there is scholarly research um and it's actually uh by very um highly
023regarded universities and scholars that prove that equity reviews are successful and they do support and address the opportunity gap across districts and across school communities that that is not very hard to find so i encourage my teammates to look at those scholarly ad articles like i said they're not hard to find and i really feel that the review is going to help the district identify and give us the next step and how are we removing pragmatic barriers that impede all of our students to participate and have access and give our our students that equitable opportunity for an excellent education one of the things that laura said at the couple meetings ago was when we first started talking about the review was that we want to be a world-class district and until we give a voice
024to our unheard students we're not going to get there and we cannot use excuse of time because there's never going to be a right time like i said we are 20 years behind on this topic because that opportunity gap hasn't really changed much in the last 20 years in our district and it's it's really sad because our community continues to evolve and change and it's just going to get worse unless we really take a step into it one of the other things that i really appreciated hearing is that um aside from the financial aspect of it is that that there's actually gonna be a possibility of of a phase two because that means that we're not gonna just check the box and we're gonna hold hopefully hold ourselves accountable for following the work and the
025recommendations from phase one of the review thank you maria i do have my own comments but i'd like to hold them until um everybody has had a chance to speak if okay and then case in that case i'm going to dive in i'm going to begin by stipulating that horrible legal word that as julie says we don't want to rush it and i'm going to look at paul in the discussion yesterday i made the comment that a lot of this is on us it's not easy and we have to nurture and care and and handle it and do it well the back end of the job uh quoting from the consultants one of the reasons that i liked the very first words and i joked this was they said a review of equity is never
026neutral because none of us are neutral so this is difficult work what we see what we don't see how we try to work together then so i'm going to stipulate that we have data that shows we need help we have data from everywhere that shows that fairness or equity or diversity and inclusion matters and i'm going to move right away to what's called rational self-interest at a previous meeting i read from major corporations diversity equity and inclusion policies these major corporations think this is serious business and that's how they are going to be productive and competitive so i'm going to get off the fairness one and onto the self-interest one about efficient use of resources and talent and i'm going to do it by analogy i'm the only male on this board i believe we
027all recognize yesterday and even today's story of equity advances for women uh that's a comparison one where people began using resources and it benefited everybody i just want to refer to one study it's a 2019 study from the university of chicago booth school of business that really got my attention this is not from any left-wing institution milton friedman was from the university of chicago on the allocation of talent and economic growth it estimated that between 20 and 40 percent of the productivity gains in the united states between 1960 and 2010 are explained by the better use of talent from women and marginalized demographic groups now you've got to qualify this a little bit because for women this would be both quantity bringing them into the workplace and out of unpaid jobs and also it's a
028mixture of quality and of the quality and the skill and people performing and improving productivity there's tons of evidence that we are failing people and missing resources and we have lots of peers who realize that work good work on diversity equity and inclusion is productive for everybody and that's what we're seeking that's what i think we're seeking and i'm indicating my position and having had a chance i would like to open it up uh if another board member would make a different comic if i could i would just uh jump in and address a couple of the comments that were made um julie uh brought up the concern around the direct connection to academic achievement as laura spoke about yesterday um for those who know me some know me better than others you know i
029consider myself somewhat of an academic nerd i love getting into the research when we put out the the rfp we knew there were levers to improve academic outcomes those levers are the curriculum are those discipline reviews are the instructional practices are the hiring practices are the access to grade level instruction and access to advanced and beyond we knew that and so does the researchers at education northwest those levers within our system impact those big six was it explicitly called out in the proposal no but we know based off of countless research studies when students see themselves in the curriculum they're more engaged in the curriculum when students see themselves in their bus drivers in their teachers in their principles they they have more opportunities to belong to be seen and to be valued when they
030make sure that we're having access to grade level and beyond instruction and when we have a higher proportion of students of all different students in our advanced and honors courses were a better organization we know these these levers these different areas impact student outcomes not paul gordon saying it tons of back uh of research supports this catherine i think you bring up a a really good point yeah and i hold me accountable to this that we have outcomes so when it your your point around hiring and recruiting yeah we know where we're at right now what we need and where we're going to be pushing them is how do we how do we transform that and i know this is a long-term obligation this is not a oh next year we're going to have uh
031an increase of 50 latino teachers this and that we know that but we have to start putting in practices and policies in place that will slowly over time uh make sure that we're looking at our interviewing practices where are we putting out information who's engaged in those conversation who's applying for our jobs all of that information has to we have to get better at that and that's something our hr team and myself and others will be engaged in but hold me accountable that it when we get that review that it has those actionable steps in it because that's part of the rfp that there are actionable steps that it's not just some nebulous hey guess what you have a a a very disproportionate uh number of educators who are one subset or another um it
032is those steps so i will make sure that we have that because that is part of the rfp that's in the proposal are those action steps and julie you're right you know that next piece going into next year and beyond because it's not going to be a one-year fix it is going to take time it is going to take resources but that's what a strategic plan does as well we have a set dollar amount and how are we choosing to use those dollars and those are going to be hard conversations about how to budget allocations but as maria said the board two boards supported the idea of equity as their value when you have values that's what drives budgeting a budget is a value statement it's what you what is a board was a business
033what is whatever believe in that's truly the values that that organization holds this board for the in all other the previous two boards their value was equity and we need to really make sure that each student when i think about equity i think equity is about belonging that kids see themselves that kids feel safe seen and valued and heard all kids not just one one group of students each and every student in our organization sees themselves we've talked about our academic data we've been very transparent with our academic data it's not great it's not great we have to do something we have a lot within our strategic plan the the equity audit is not the silver bullet i am not here to tell you because we do a silver because we do the equity audit
034in june we're going to have rainbows and sunshine that is not it it will give us a pathway forward in that in these areas along with all the other hard work we have in our strategic plan i think the combination of our strategic plan which the adequate audit is a part of but those other areas around improvement in math and literacy and sel and now having this equity audit all those pieces coming together that's where i believe our strategic plan is powerful and impactful to the the lives of our students thank you paul um before we move to the vote i will offer a last opportunity for any comment yeah i just i want to say thank you paul for some of that clarification because based on the presentation and kind of the materials we've
035seen so far i was concerned it was a little more on the statistical side and not um i had interpreted the implementation policy recommendation side to be sort of that phase two work that they were referencing which i agree is a lion's share of work and i have no expectation that it's a quick fix or by any means um so that's positive to hear and and i don't want to anyone to misconstrue that that i don't object to the project itself or the need for the project or that it's part of our strategic plan or that it's something the district needs i i have just been concerned in a you know not understanding it really until we've now had these conversations um be the the timing of such important work and really cramming it into
036one semester with maybe two looking at their deliverable schedule two months of data collection which i assume is includes their their on-site visits um i'd feel much more comfortable if there was a way to extend this schedule i you know i could care less a week start now or start february if we can extend the schedule to make sure that we're getting qual quality participation and and work um you know we gave ourselves two years in in the strategic plan i think recognizing this is a big project and undertaking um i am not necessarily saying delay for delays sake i i don't have any issues starting it's it's truly just that amount of work in that compressed time getting the quality that we need to really you know move the district in in the right
037direction that's you know i'm not an expert in this area i recognize that so i don't know maybe two months is reasonable but i'm just looking at our our resources and what we're asking everybody to do to make that work and it it feels like a lot i know you know it's important work so we have to do hard work um but that sort of continues to be my concern and i don't know if there's flexibility on the deliverable timelines or um anything we can do there well could you comment on that um whether there is any mutual flexibility in as we progress through the calendar on this contract yeah i believe so in my conversation after uh the workshop yesterday with them um i believe there is that flexibility um we have the set
038price it kind of goes to julie i think julie said this yesterday here's the amount we're approving a 108 don't quote me on the number 180 000 here are the deliver deliverables get it done without the saying it has to all be done by june um i believe that is something that they would work with um if that would i'm paraphrasing a little bit of what you said yesterday uh comment that i didn't make sorry you can go kathryn as soon as i made this this quick comment uh one of the things that i did uh impressed me in terms of the qualifications and honesty of education northwest was their comment that measuring inequities doesn't create solutions and they refer to the federal government efforts on in this field uh and so i think that
039recognizes the phase two that it's on us the points that you bring that this is for the real world uh catherine nagyuma and in that same vein and please forgive me if i'm getting too much in the minutia but maria my question and to everyone as well is as you speak about the unheard population which is critical how are we going to get them to speak in this and and participate in this um i agree with you there is a an unheard population and we do need to hear from them and hear what they need and what will make their students educations uh better but how are we going to get them to be heard and to speak um when it's been such a problem so far well that that was more of a hypothetical
040comment but i i don't think it is i mean i think that's an important part how are we going to ensure that there's participation from the the people that are most marginalized yeah and that's one of that was one of the questions that i asked yesterday because um oftentimes we tend to use um email surveys which only really targets a specific population and so then um like they mentioned and i agree um i can speak for say for a good majority of the latino community they feel more comfortable speaking to somebody that looks like that that identifies with them better that speaks their language and so here um i was glad we saw the group of um from northwest uh that they're very they're you know they have bilingual staff and so if it requires
041them that's why i asked also are the parent surveys uh is there gonna be interviews um so that was added up to to the contract as well so i mean that's i i'm not going to say how that works going to be done because that's why they're getting the big bugs but that was actually addressed yesterday by saying yeah they were going to do interview groups and then they talked about maybe attending um probably the pac the migrant pac meetings probably at midnight so yes there's our district has some resources but we're going to have to work beyond sending an email survey uh which doesn't really work for our students that are marginalized and our families great question i i think the one thing that we've done a nice job of in recent months up
042to the past year and a half is doing a better job of reaching out uh to all of our community members and it looks very different it is no longer just emails it's paper it's going to our pac meetings it's working with our our migrant bilingual uh liaisons it's working with our homeless liaisons it's working with our staff and it's also incumbent upon our board members to to be championing the work as well and pushing the work out and making sure that everybody knows there's this opportunity to have that voice but i'm proud of the work and really championed by diana haglin our director of communications of transforming how we communicate from being on various radio stations from kind of the general big radio stations in our area kpq coho to our spanish radio stations
043which we'll also speak about later to being on facebook live with cafe um working with uh parque's pedrinos really literally being in the parks really being out uh in person and doing this work is very different than where uh when i first started where we're at so we're we've made huge inroads in that area and i appreciate what maria said as well it's still about relationships and that's why i lean on everybody it is about relationships and getting that message out there um and making sure that um that that we have uh education northwest who who can um engage our community in english spanish uh in various different ways as well great question and just to kind of answer your question there just because they're not heard doesn't mean we're just gonna not try to
044get their voice out um so you know as as a leader as a board member um just for me this work is about being a proactive leader and really assessing and addressing how we can improve as a district how are we going to address those cultural the linguistic and also the social economic dynamics that our district has had and currently faces and needs to address as a board i agree with you that that's absolutely critical again this uh this equity audit is useless if we don't hear from that demographic of people so that and so for me that it is the minutia of it and how northwest uh education north education northwest will have to work very hard to make that happen you know as paul was saying that it's been a lot of change
045through the years of trying to get that that community heard i couldn't agree more again my point was only to say that it is they must be heard and how do we best make that happen right i just have one question if that's okay one more thing um their proposal is for four days on site is that correct i guess that makes me a little nervous in that is that enough time to really engage these groups and do those these face-to-face meetings especially with some of these communities and realizing covet folks may still be uncomfortable going out and meeting with in groups so again why the timing is just feels a little off to me during this period but i think my only answer to that is you know this is these are people who've
046done this they're the ones who who recommended the four days um so i don't have a better answer than that i'm going to speak personally and then i think we'll be ready to vote um there are two sides to this that i heard there's a lot of uncertainty as to how we can do it and how well we can do it it's not easy as catherine said to reach out um and i don't think we at this stage we have the answers you heard what i was saying acting that this is an untapped resource of improvement that we really really really need and fairness and equity that we really need to bring to the table so um it'll be a partnership between us and education northwest they have a lot of knowledge about how to
047do things but then the foot soldiers will be a lot of us and my analogy again it was interesting i was talking to an after school leader talking about how much more contact they had with families as a result of covert so i think we've learned quite a lot about how to reach out to families and students in the last painful 24 months we've got to use that and you know i i don't underestimate the difficulty of getting a total of a really good response but i think that we have to go into this really it is our priority it's a strategic priority it's a human priority and it's an efficiency priority and i personally am prepared to go in with a certain amount of uncertainty uh with what appears to be a competent partner
048and go for it um that so i think that's my way of assessing both your reservations and concerns and hoping that you know looking for the benefit of the entire community that we can put it together and do it well turn my microphone back on i'll get worse as it goes on instead of better i think um i can't remember which order i did last time because i don't remember which of the numbers over the districts but julia i'm going to look at you first and i'm going to call one by one for a vote on the motion we do need broker vote on this you can do it all last time it seemed to be more efficient to speak one at a time so that i could count okay i i can i can
049say all those in favor signify i will do that i [Music] [Laughter] well thank you all very very much and i'm pardon the awkwardness and collecting votes [Laughter] board thank you and i just want to i appreciate the conversation and i appreciate the direction you you're giving me uh and as we go forward so thank you for the the robust conversation yesterday and for today thank you okay the next item on our agenda is the first read of a number of policies and i'm in aura of the list uh it looks like the policy committee is firing on all cylinders i don't know whether it's all katherine and maria or whether some of you or michelle has some some credit from before while she was still in office and thank kim and the staff for
050the support but at any rate uh that is our next item and uh do one or other you want to introduce policies yeah i'll take it right here and go um so this feels like it happened like five years ago um it was at the beginning of november when these policies were reviewed um so we're bringing those forward now um so the first one is our lap program and really what this policy is doing is making sure that we have continued flexibility in how those dollars are spent i think a great example of that was the summer school program in years past the lap dollars could only spend be spent for a certain population of students through this policy it expanded it and allowed us to open up summer school for all students and we
051had our our largest summer school ever uh through that policy uh change the the high school the waiver high school graduation requirements this too is kind of coming out of the cobit world where it ospi allowed us to waive two of the 24 required credits um what they're doing with this policy is no longer making this a temporary policy or an emergency policy um that this policy allows us moving forward to be able to do that however it literally states in here that we take the good faith steps in making sure that we're doing everything possible to support our students before there's ever any waiver of credits for a student the next piece is excused and unexcused this is really just changing uh the two impacts the first is that we cannot file a truancy
052petition earlier than seven unexcused absences in a month and it used to be five and the next one is no later than 15 unexcused absences in a school year 32 31 all the way down to 6 800 in years past policies allowed us to withhold transcripts and all kinds of other things if students didn't pay if there was a myriad of other things occurring we can no longer hold transcripts transcripts must be moved forward diploma is yes but transcripts must be sent on if they're being requested by another organization another school district or college university we cannot hold those because someone didn't pay a fine or some other reason so those are those are all part of that same kind of thinking 3116 it really is changing uh language used to be students out of
053home foster care moving it into foster care uh in a little bit of other a few other little uh wording aspects there the next two are staff development uh the training with the board uh the different policies the senate bill 5044 around uh the training for equity diversity and inclusion and then 5520 the staff development there with the model policies and then finally 5515 which is the workhorse secondary traumatic stress um and we gave an exam we had a great question by one of our board members on that uh we're doing our well-being project that launched last year uh with a sponsorship of executive director mike lane and countless other uh community partners so that will continue forward i'm gonna breathe you got all that down right okay and that's all questions right nothing that's
054a lot uh if we have questions reservations or a need for clarification the floor is open and if not these will then move for a second reading and a formal acceptance of the next board meeting i do want to make one comment myself training and development for board members some of this is new new uh requirement under law and we will have to set up our own timetable and make sure we go to school properly yeah thank you martin i think um what i'm going to do is take these papers so i happen to have a hard copy and study them thoroughly prior to the next meeting and provide any comments by email before the second reading okay thank you so just uh just something to note is that actually all of these policies are
055based on a house or senate bill yeah yeah these were not when anti-school district changes these are these are state level changes thank you legislative rep and guru the next item is board communication when it's customary for board members to share and tell the community and each other anything that's on their heart for what they've been observing and seeing and step forward or signal when you want to speak i'll go this way first i i want to say the privilege of showing up to see a part of the sign language caroling today at pibas and that was great so i really appreciate for the the staff to get us those invites when when opportunities arise because that's really special to go see that and the students did a wonderful job um i'm starting to get
056busy as lead blood drip now um going over some webinars that from last trying to catch up on what's been going on the last year i'm just participated in a live webinar for the talking a little bit about budgeting updates there's going to be a short legislative session starting in january but it's real short so not a lot of a lot of budget related items will be on there so despite all these new mandates and programs and things that we have to offer we're not gonna see really any changes in in funding allocations or sources or anything or that's the expectation at least for this session so a lot of this session is going to be really to tee up for the 2023 goddard are you gonna be in 2023 uh for the next um
057the next session so um i'm coming up to speed on that and i know we'll we'll need to look at our district priorities and um be prepared to share those with the greater group um around february march so that's all i got for now thank you thank you julie so i also caught a little bit of miss meadows um asl concert um yes we like getting invitations to those um and i also attended a strengths concert a virtual strength concert this week thank you to ms vaughn and ms kirker for that from washington elementary um i also want to say thank you to all of our classified and certified teachers our staff as we go into this break hopefully everybody gets to enjoy some down time and not have to think about work um and
058get some good rest and relaxation time and i'm sure our kiddos will miss jus miss happy faces over the break and we'll be eager to return in january well good because i will take your time well first of all and i want to say thank you to martin and to laura for um giving of your time to meet with me individually so that we could get to know each other better i'm very grateful and i appreciate your kindness and and your offering of that time to me and further to that maria and i will be getting together next week uh hopefully as we discuss so i look look forward to that julie we've gotten together too much already so um so i just wanted to take time to think thank you for that um furthermore
059i want to thank dr gordon and kim uh for setting up the appointments that they have for me i felt very strongly that to learn about being on the board i needed to learn the schools and so i purpose to make time available to visit as many schools to visit all the schools and at present i visited four schools and i have nine more appointments on my calendar for the next few schools and i look forward to them very very much because i cannot tell you how wonderful it has been to have gone to the four schools that i've gone to so please if you'll indulge me for a minute um what i wanted to do was have prepared questions for each principal that i met with before we toured their school um because i
060again i'm learning and have so much to learn from them so i prepared simple questions for myself um what's the very best thing about your school what's the very worst thing about your school what does your school need the most what is your ratio of teachers to ancillary staff when and how are your parent volunteers working in your schools and have they been allowed to return does your school have any coordination with service clubs in the community could you see them as being benefit beneficial to your students education and my final question which took up the back of the page for each one was um what do you want me as a board member to know what do you want the school board to know how can we best serve you and how can i
061help facilitate that and be a part of it so wow i mean just wow these uh these principles i can't say enough wonderful things about him i started at orchard middle school and orchard holds a very special place in my heart i'm embarrassed to say that my uh daughter was planned in the district to go to orchard and i had family members that said oh no matter what don't go to orchard she's got to go to pioneers she's got a choice to somewhere else and that's primarily because of athletics my family is a big into athletics and wanted and avery's done a lot of sports so we wanted to make that available for her best way possible thankfully no one in her class from washington elementary in fifth grade could choice anywhere else and it
062was the greatest blessing ever i cannot say enough about the staff and the educators at orchard middle school i was privileged to meet with principal brown we spent over an hour and a half talking and going to classrooms the the what's going on at her school is um incredible just a few things just right off the bat she has 420 students the very best thing about her school and her opinion is her staff and how they know each student and that the kids want to be there it is the most stable environment that they have 70 percent of her students live in poverty that is a shocking and devastating number but um i can tell you that that that i know firsthand that how much that staff cares for all of their students just as
063an example of that um they've started something called billy's thrift shop at orchard middle school this is a thrip thrift shop to help with the with the students and the families that are at that school and this is a oms staff payroll deduction that they are allowed to fill out and the staff at orchard middle school is having money deducted from their paychecks to help provide for their students that is just one example of how much they care at orchard um and like i said it was just it was amazing to hear her answers to these questions they're having team time daily for teachers there because of what we talked about the trauma that the teachers the educators have felt through this covet time they're having a mentor class on mondays with 15 students a
064piece and these students have an individual mentor that meets with them on mondays and then again on fridays to check in and see how they're doing i mean the things that they are doing are just um remarkable but um one of the things that she said this is her 28th year as an educator and this has been her hardest year that's another stunning statement to me but she also the one statement that i circled in her um and all four of these pages was i think something that we have to keep in mind because it's a balancing act but um what is hard is that she is finding that schools are asked to be everything to everyone everything to every student and they can't be so i just that i found that also a really
065remarkable stunning statement and i i think it's um important for us to remember we cannot be everything to every student we may want to be we may try but it wouldn't it's not going to be possible um one of the exciting things i'm sure you all know about and forgive me if i'm telling you things you you already know but the career in tech education every eighth grader goes on a field trip once a month uh to different areas they've been to van well nursery cmi and different health care facilities next is coming family and consumer services like gyms and and hotels and motels to get an idea of what um what a career could look like for them on through uh after high school and i think that's just so critical because there are
066so many different routes that our students can go um after they go through high school um so one thing i do want to note the first classroom that we went to was avery's sixth grade math teacher and we absolutely adore him uh he has is wonderful and i think instilled in her i love her math and she really excels at math now for that or i'm sure partly because of that um i came into the back of the classroom with with principal brown and even with the microphones on i was stunned that i could not understand what he was saying in the back of the classroom even with his microphone because of the masking i couldn't understand what he was saying and i want to make the point that i am afraid that we will
067deeply regret not having tried harder to end uh the masks in some way form or fashion particularly after i visited the elementary schools and saw these littles as you call them uh trying to understand what their teacher was saying and learn phonics and learn reading and without um with having the mask over the over the teacher's face and over the children's face so that's just a point that i want to make because i visited minimum 20 different classrooms in these four schools and um that was very that was striking to me because it is impairing their education and i think that as kobit did um it's something that we're going to have to think about um moving forward uh as mrs um excuse me principal brown said she believes her students are two years behind
068um and i'm afraid that that that is not helping that is hurting um so next i went to uh valley academy and newberry elementary valley academy um very interesting to learn about that they kind of feel like they're out there alone a little bit and would like to be involved more and and heard a little bit more but went into every classroom at that school and that was really really neat with them principal lover camp next was newberry elementary and boy does principal yanez have a fantastic story he actually went to elementary school here and moved around quite a bit and uh ends up now back he went in one of the first years uh as a student to newbury and is now the principal um it was he has 399 students valley academy has
069178 um finally the the last place i was at and spent two hours with principal lopez and i i thank them all very much for their generous uh time that they shared with me and i just it was invaluable and i would love to go back and and plan to um but his is also a remarkable story 26 years um at lewis and clark starting out as an aide and then a teacher and now the principal and he has the only dual language program in all of central washington and um i can say he's kind of quiet about it because he wants it to be perfected before um he looks at it or or wants people to see it as a model for other dual language programs um i can say that i did not
070know that we had this dual language program here had i known i believe i would my husband and i spoke about this afterwards we would have put avery in it she was in um spanish immersion for six years prior to moving here and had we known that opportunity was available we would have loved to have continued her um her time in in a dual language program and boy is it a remarkable program we i i think we went to every classroom in this school while i was there and it was really really great um so again thank you kim for making these appointments happen and and dr gordon and um and again great appreciation to these wonderful principals who are doing the most remarkable work i'm uh in i'm i was honored to see it
071i'm in awe of what they're doing and proud of it and um i look forward to the to the other um appointments that i have thank you thank catherine and thanks for making the business it's a two-way street i think uh you give encouragement and enthusiasm to the schools in the same way that they've made you as exuberant as you have been for the last couple of minutes um i do have a board communication that i would like to make um much more boring but nevertheless i think quite no quite deep and actually i'm pretty serious about it on december the 7th the surgeon general of the united states issued an advisory on protecting youth mental health i spent too little time in classrooms to be a reliable witness but as you return to in-person
072school this year i think i noticed three trends first students showed great happiness of rejoining friends and teachers they were ecstatic then i thought that the students i saw were more attentive even in elementary schools more orderly in their lines than before covert as if they had a hunger to get back to full-time learning those the good things but we also have a lot of reports and observations of increases in pranks and mischief sometimes serious as we've had at the high school which it may be i'm going to say consistent with causes of harm like anxiety alienation and depression and i've had at least one parent communicate that they see that kind of situation in their child so if we're looking at that situation and just playing a very low key few resources i want
073to wish all a happy winter break and i add a hope that we can use the time to try to be charitable to give a bit more space tolerance and patience so that the holidays are a self-repair time hope for some self-repair from which we can and our children can return rested and strengthened for 2022. thank you the next item is paul thank you all i just want to echo something that you said martin to everybody every board member i absolutely agree with you martin our staff get a charge out of board members being there from the concerts to the classrooms to the visits they sincerely appreciate it they love showing you what their school is about it's why i i believe in these these one-on-one walk-throughs i believe it's an important one just from
074a relationship standpoint you get to know these leaders but they take you into classrooms and then catherine i appreciate your comments i really do that no one's hiding any classroom from our board members you were literally open to see whatever you wanted to see within theirs and they're having honest conversations with you uh they give you that real world perspective of from their perspective um they're sharing those pieces so i just really want to honor our board for participating for being there for for getting out there and engaging our schools um next one a little more challenging of a segway we've we've experienced a number of threats over the threats and rumors of threats over these last few weeks um believe stemming from uh the shooting in michigan um however we take every instance very
075seriously um we've moved our high school to an online platform because the threats uh mentioned our school they mentioned uh a specific day we're receiving other rumors of threats what we're asking i was on coho radio this morning what i'm asking our students in our community members if there is a credible threat to please speak to your principals speak to your teachers call email it is really hard to submit when we submit the anonymous tips to really follow up to understand what's happening in these situations often oftentimes people will not respond back we always respond to the individual saying please let us know who you are please tell us if you if there are other concerns we have incredible partners with the wenatchee police department um i am so proud of our partnership and even
076chief crown said a few weeks back that our partnership is at one of the best places it's been in a long long time um and it's because we truly value them in what they bring and we value our sros and i go back to the board's commitment to having our sros in our district it has made a significant difference having our people on the ground who know our kids but we're the the the wenatchee police department like every other organization is struggling through covid struggling with staffing struggling with all these pieces but i sincerely appreciate chiefs crown's effort to make sure that he's supporting our students our schools our staff and our community for instance we had a young person on snapchat grab some statement that was made about some other place in the united
077states and forwarded that on to one of their friends as a joke i am so proud of the young person who who they in their family reached out to uh to our school and to tell us hey this is happening it allowed us to respond it allowed us to respond accordingly the police actually sent uh an officer to the home to make sure that everybody was okay and then to try to figure out next steps that worked because then we also went out to the other the the individual who sent it uh to check in to make sure that they were okay and to see if there was any other information we're following up on these because safety at the end of the day safety's the superintendent's number one responsibility to make sure that our
078students our staff and our community are safe within our schools we're doing our best but i am pleading with our students and our community members if you hear something it is credible please call us email us or on the tip line give us a way to connect with you so we can work through this ron brown has done an amazing job he's taken this on as well under his umbrella which is a pretty big umbrella anymore as he reminds me at times uh but he does it so incredibly well i want give ron the microphone if he has one just to kind of talk about where we're at in our district under his leadership in his efforts and where we're going um next steps with that classified position as well ron yours thank you paul
079thank you board um i i want to echo a couple of things that a previous board did approve that are are helping our schools which is some of the the safety security measures were put in place uh using some of the leftover or some of the some of the bond money from our previous successful bond so i i'm partnering with the esd we joined the esd co-op the safety coop we have never been members of that and i felt it was important to have a regional partner to help us through providing guidance guidelines direction that's similar to other school districts our size and in our area but it also gives us another place for support uh mike dingle is the the fellow's name at the esd who works with us our current partnership we are
080doing i am doing since since i've taken this over about six weeks ago um doing walkthroughs of each school to do safety audits essentially so visiting all the schools i've been to all the elementaries except for one i have another one tomorrow and the goal of those is to really develop what are our district expectations where could where do we need to be more consistent more clear in our guidance to keep our kids and our staff safe we have tremendous things in place we just have to be a little better with our consistency between sites and our consistent approaches we put in the video cameras the vestibules and some other buzz in techniques for for an example and we need to solidify that process so that when you go to a building it's handled the
081same way uh in a safe way and we we don't know who's has harm in their heart when they come into a building so we have to just be better at some of our internal processes so one of the gaps that was identified is someone to really pay attention to that day-to-day uh i do have a couple of other duties that i have to maintain across the district so it would be very difficult for me to maintain attention where it's needed on the day-to-day safety and security needs of the school district i've i've worked with the sros and the ssos recently to have some conversations about what what do we need i i listen to the experts i do not have a law enforcement background but i had i think i have a common sense
082lens to look at things and you know i think we identified we need somebody day-to-day to pay attention to that so i brought that to paul we had the conversation and we are moving forward with creating a posting for a safety security coordinator it is not going to be an officer i mean it's not going to be a commissioned officer necessarily they're not going to be guarding things they are going to be there to make sure we do what we say we're going to do to keep our kids safe follow up on threats follow up on drills exercises visitations to schools to make sure we are following our own processes and procedures and and unless we monitor that it's very easy to become complacent and nobody's fault for becoming complacent is just we don't necessarily
083we think of teaching learning helping kids loving kids as catherine mentioned earlier and it's easy to overlook some of those basic physical security needs of our of our buildings and our kids because we're so focused on other things so it is someone that's going to really help us out we think we'll have that posted in january and be ready to uh fill that as we we're crossing our fingers we have some applicants that are highly qualified and ready to really jump in and start right off the bat and get us in a better place any questions from uh board um question not a question but well maybe some questions but a comment this is not this is not the first time this topic has come up you know the board a couple boards ago actually
084hired a director of safety and security who ended up leaving our district under um some stressful tensions internal tensions um so i'm glad to hear you acknowledge that you are not a law enforcement agent and um that you i hope the esd is providing um a list of specific um things for us to look for for you to look for and address and evaluate so i'm glad about that the other um thing that was important to me in the past when we had this position was not only looking at the building the safety and security of the building but also the conditions of the building and what risks are there from i remember soffits that were loose and that kind of thing or tripping hazards or blah blah blah that sort of thing are we
085in court and also um adherence to policies regarding supervision on field trips and athletic events and that kind of thing are those all incorporated in this new position or is it a more narrow focus on this round uh the policies and procedures regarding risk management and the monitoring of things that you you directly mentioned like the uh the field trip requests or other other safety issues not just physical safety of the students and staff but the physical plant trips and falls things like that are safety committees that meet every every month in buildings or every quarter in buildings they will take on some of that i i think we're going to prioritize the the the first mentioned safety items and get those very very well taken care of while i guess tiptoeing into making sure
086our risk management and our proactive steps are in place uh but i don't want to say that it's it's it's gonna fix everything immediately uh it's gonna be a process over time but yeah i belie i believe with the collaboration with myself and with that person we'll work on those risk management pieces to make sure we have the proactive policies and procedures in place to keep us from having accidents or having issues in the future know just highlight that uh we do uh the safety the trip fall those types of uh walk throughs with brian baracki and with the esd paul i'm forgetting paul's last name um but he he's a safety that's his expertise and we contract with the esd through that so they walk through literally looking looking for those types of tripping
087hazards and they're on a regular monthly basis rotation on that as well so we're moving forward putting pieces in place um really looking forward uh to to this this um additional individual joining our district just i have a quick quick question i actually appreciate the update i think you know there's been a lot of concern a lot of questions of parents from parents just why is the district not talking more about this so really appreciate the detail update from both ron and superintendent gordon um so in regards to the funding for this position are we also planning on getting a new sro to replace little jared yeah um and i'm not breaking news here this is known uh uh officer reinfeldt uh has also submitted his resignation and he's moving on to other uh pathways
088um 100 his decision his life and the little i've heard if you know any police officer it is an incredibly challenging role to to serve each and every day but i was super honored to know officer reinfeld in his role uh these last few years he he is and he came into my office to let me know the other day um he he said this job really saved him he loved this job he loved serving our students in our community in the way that we allowed him to serve uh our students and if if you know officer reinfeldt he is this big old dude but one of the kindest humans on this planet really has a belief about how to do the sro work because that sro work is not for every police officer that
089is a very unique role and it takes unique individuals to fill it so we have um i ron still mean on the last name officer corey fuller officer corey fuller uh replaced the uh officer jared shepard needed a lot of assistance here so now they will they are recruiting right now an officer to replace uh officer reinfeldt they didn't give me any names but they are very hopeful with a couple individuals that they are purposefully recruiting for that position so we hope to have both of those up and running uh full-time again sometime in in january but that will be uh we we will sit on the interview like we have with others um but we will take the lead from the police department i'm really sorry to hear that jared is leaving he was
090a fabulous addition to our district and i think the kids really loved and respected him and he had a nice way about him so that's sad news yeah yeah when he wanted to meet with me i was like that's odd but i i you know once i hear a story i totally understand barring him moving out of the area is it possible he'd be available to consult with whoever is is hired i mean could we enter a contract or something minimal so that because it is it's such a skilled role and he was so very good at it and not to say that um you know anyone can just step in and do it the same way but the insights he's he would have over those so many years i don't even know i mean
091it'd be something you'd have to float to him and see if he's interested but i could see value in that especially with two brand new guys seeing some way to i think it's a it's a great uh idea um officer corey feller has been with us we're talking two months two and a half months three somewhere in there so yeah the the learning curve um yeah that's absolutely something we can have a conversation about all right to a quick update and i'm going to hand this one to diana on the change in how we're doing our spanish language for our board meetings uh diana thanks paul um really quickly too i just want to share that um communication we're all communicators i think our district has done a great job this week and last week
092of ensuring that we have streamlined communication with our parents and families as it relates to reported threats and some of the issues that we've been dealing with those are not easy things they're stressful for the entire system but i i want to thank our entire team for the work that they did i also want to thank our parents too we appreciate you and your thoughtfulness as we work through these issues and know that student safety and security is our top priority at all times uh and we're continuing to get better every single day uh in this work two i want to say that um the school board you are communicators you are powerful messengers and it's great that you have those experiences in our schools you can share those with your circle of influences um
093your communities your your families people that you know and that really helps to elevate our educators and the work that's being done it's hard work and it really helps um to share those stories out with people in the community so thank you thank you for doing that we're we're all communicators um in that vein one thing that we are doing and something that we do constantly is always evaluating the effectiveness of our communication strategies and making sure that our diverse audiences are getting the information that they need uh whether it's about school whether it's about the district or things that are going on one opportunity that has presented itself is uh we do a board summary report after each board meeting a summary report is written in english and spanish and then we send that
094out to over 10 000 people on our email list that includes parents community members a variety of other individuals all of our staff receive a copy of that so that is written in spanish and english we also provide the video link to our youtube recording of the meeting so people can watch the youtube video if they would prefer uh we have also been providing a spanish audio translation of the video so of the entire meeting we've included that in that email summary that goes out um after some review and reflection we feel that the audio translation is not being utilized to the greatest extent that it could be by our spanish-speaking community so it presented us with an opportunity to think differently about how we get that information out to our spanish-speaking families and so
095we are making a shift to transition um to leverage our spanish radio stations we have a partnership with la nueva we have two regular weekly programs one on monday our cafeto program that plays at noon and provides regular updates during that meeting we will provide or excuse me during that program we will provide what we're calling kind of board briefs or board shorts really condense down bullet points highlight highlight reel if you will of things that happened at the board meeting so that will be a part of their regular programming they'll talk about new things that happened at the board meeting and things that our community really want to know in addition we'll be using our live with mr lopez which is a program hosted by lewis and clark principal alfonso lopez on tuesdays at
0967 00 a.m on la nueva he will also share those board summaries those board shorts in his programming as well the effectiveness of this is that we expand our reach by leveraging the power of radio it's a free medium you don't have to have an email account you don't have to have a computer to access that and people can listen to the radio on their way to work dropping off their kids in the workplace so it really does provide us with a great deal of flexibility and we are hopeful that that will be an effective means to get that really high level important information and decisions that are being made by the board out to our spanish-speaking community so that's a shift that we're making in addition to that um in our weekly newsletter that
097we send out on fridays wsd weekly we will continue to use that board short kind of idea and we'll have a bulleted list and at the bottom of each one of our wsd weeklies and again that goes out to about an audience of roughly 10 000 individuals that receive that so we're continuing to improve our outreach to our spanish-speaking families and really looking for ways that we can make sure they get the information that they need as valued members of the wenatchee school district community paul diana thank you um wrap it up this was the longest superintendent report like ever i just finished off with happy holidays i am eternally grateful for our students our staff our parents our community and our board of education um but i really do hope everybody's able to take
098a moment uh to be able to enjoy the holidays whatever that looks like for each person but just a gratitude gratitude for for everybody in our community as we move forward thank you board thank you paul and thank you everybody at the table and in front of the table thank you in the audience appreciate it and with that i we will be meeting again the second week in january enjoy the winter break and thank you very much you